Manual

The text which follows is the first English translation of the Manual or Handbook of Epictetus, dated 1567. The English title translates the Greek ἐγχειρίδιον “in the hand”, “ready to hand”. This little book condenses Epicurus’ philosophical teachings, for which Herodes Atticus hailed him as “the greatest of Stoics” (according to Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 1.2.6). Epictetus was born at about AD 55 in Hierapolis, in Phrygia.[1] As the name ἐπίκτητος, “acquired”, reveals, he was a slave: he belonged to Epaphroditus, himself a former slave of the emperor Nero, then a rich and powerful freedman. Epictetus joined his master in Rome, where he also may have met Seneca (Seddon 2005, 5). After being at some point manumitted, Epictetus left Rome in AD 89, following the decree of expulsion of all philosophers from Italy issued by Domitian. Thus, he opened his own school in Nicopolis in Epirus, which attracted many upper-class Romans as disciples. Among them, Flavius Arrianus was to become a reputed historian, now best known for his Anabasis of Alexander and Indica. It was he who took on the task of putting the master’s teachings in writing. While in the prefatory letter (addressed to an otherwise unknown Lucius Gellius), Arrian professes that his book adheres to the oral teachings of Epictetus, it has been suggested that its content is Arrian’s own creation (Wirth 1967). On the other hand, it has been argued that Epictetus himself, not Arrian, was the author (Dobbin 1998). However, the majority of scholars remains convinced of Arrian’s authorship (see e.g. Long 1982; Hadot 1996). Although we cannot ascertain to what extent Arrian’s words reflect Epictetus’ teaching verbatim, it is true that they “were intended to present Stoic moral philosophy in the terms and the style that Epictetus employed as a teacher intent on bringing his students to philosophic enlightenment as the Stoics had understood this enterprise” (Seddon 2005, 6-7).

The two works which were written by Arrian and are connected with Epictetus’ teachings are the Discourses and the Manual. The former appear as a recording of the daily discussions between Epictetus and his students after formal lessons had concluded for the day, ranging on a variety of topics related to Stoic philosophy. The Manual can be considered an abstract of the Discourses and part of its text is derived from the main work. It is a succinct exposition of the Stoic philosophic system, revolving around the central concept of virtue (ἀρετή) as the access key to happiness (εὐδαιμονία). While common human beings are subject to the twists and turns of fortune, stoic philosophers know that happiness is in us and depends on the capacity of regarding everything which is outside us with indifference. Moreover, stoic philosophers firmly believe that the world has been rationally ordered by the divine mind in the best possible way. Therefore, they strive to act according to the rational order of the universe and accept their place in it. This is the core of the stoic doctrine, as it is expounded in the Manual also by means of similes and images: humans are like actors of a play, which is as long as the playwright chooses it to be (Handbook 17); philosophical training is comparable to training as a wrestler for the Olympic games (29).

Epictetus’ Encheiridion enjoyed wide success in Renaissance Europe. Together with Plato’s dialogues, Neoplatonic treatises (Plotinus, Iambichus, Synesius), Cicero’s Academica, and the Outlines of Pyrronism by Sextus Empiricus, it provided early modern readers with new, un-Aristotelian models for explaining psychological phenomena, with a new emphasis on the emotions (Park and Kessler 1988, 460). It was first published in Greek in 1529 in two editions: one in Venice, together with Simplicius’ commentary from the beginning of the sixth century (USTC 856490); the other in Nurnberg (USTC 649345). But the text became popular especially through the Latin translation of Angelus Politianus (Angelo Poliziano), first printed in 1498 in the edition of all his works (USTC 991842), then frequently reprinted. A previous translation by Nicolaus Perottus (Niccolò Perotti), made in the early 1450s, is preserved in nineteen manuscripts but was to be published only in 1954. Politianus’ translation remained the standard one until the early 1560s and the two further Latin translations by Hieronymus Verlenius (Den Bosch, 1543; USTC 410903) and Thomas Naogeorgus (Strasbourg, 1554; USTC 676441) failed to challenge its primacy. It was instead the 1561 translation by Hieronymus Wolfius (Wolf), published in Basel, which gradually superseded Politianus’ one.[2]

As regards the sixteenth-century vernacular translations outside England, the Manual was first translated in French in 1538 by Antoine Du Moulin (USTC 38009; reprinted in 1544, 1546, and 1558), then in 1567 by André de Rivandeau (USTC 5933), in 1591 by Guillaume Du Vair (USTC 48009). It was translated in Italian in 1564 by Giulio Ballino (USTC 828169, reprinted in 1565) and in 1582 by Matteo Franceschi, together with Simplicius’ commentary[3] (USTC 856521, reprinted in 1583). It was also translated in Dutch in 1564 (USTC 409532).

The 1567 English translation of the Manual was made by James Sanford (fl. 1567–1582), a scholar and minor poet on whose life information is scanty (see Salmon 2004). There is no record of his admission to Oxford, Cambridge, or the Inns of Court, while his acquaintance with French and Italian suggests that he was also educated abroad. In addition to the Manual, he was the translator of the works contained in a book published in the same year, 1567 (USTC 506688): Plutarch’s Amatoria narrationes (part of Moralia), Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, and sententiae of the Greek philosophers. Furthermore, he translated Agrippa’s De vanitate scientiarum, printed in 1569 (USTC 506868) and again in 1575;  Lodovico Guicciardini’s L’hore di ricreatione in 1573 (The garden of pleasure, USTC 507656, reprinted in 1576); the Revelation of S. John in 1582 (USTC 509495).

Sanford’s edition is composed of the following parts: title page (A1r); epigram to queen Elizabeth (A1v); dedicatory letter to the queen (A2r-A3v); letter to the reader (A4r-A4v); poetic paratexts (A5r-A5v); life of Epictetus (A6r-A7r); translated text of the Manual (A8r-F4v); a short poem by the translator on Epictetus’ motto Ἀνέχου και ἀπέχου “sustain and refrain” (F5r-F5v); the apophthegms of Epictetus (F6r-F7v).

The title page of the 1567 Manual declares that the translation has been made using the French and “conferred with two Latin translations”. There is no doubt that the French translation used by Sanford is the one by Du Moulin, who in his turn followed less the Greek original text and more the Latin translation by Politianus (Zanta 1914, 63). The translation by de Rivandeau came out in the same year as Sanford’s and a comparison of the two texts shows no connection between them. Moreover, the number of chapters which we find in Sandford’s book is the same as in Du Moulin (70),[4] whereas Rivaudeau has 63.[5]

Being more concerned with moral instruction than with philological accuracy, Du Moulin did not hesitate to add explicatory words or phrases. Out of the seven cases listed by Zanta (1914, 65-6), Sanford follows him in six.[6] For instance, both translators add the entire chapter 33, taking it from Simplicius’ commentary. In the chapter titles, Sanford sometimes expands the French text for the sake of clarity: for example, in chapter 7 Comment il faut entreprendre becomes “How a man ought to take a matter in hand that we may be void of perturbation, and first by meditation”.

As for the Latin translations, we are able to detect which ones Sanford used from the paratexts, in which he extensively reproduces parts of previous paratexts. The summary of the main points of Epictetus’ philosophy (A2v), contained in the epistle to the queen, translates the summary provided by Wolf in his praefatio (1561, A3r), though with some precepts ordered differently. Wolf’s edition is also the source for the annotations which accompany Sanford’s translation.

Some lines below, Sanford makes clear that he does not intend to instruct the queen by using the Latin proverb sus minervam, “a pig [who wants to teach] Minerva” (see e.g. Cicero, Ad familiares 9.18.3). The proverb had been used for the same laudatory purpose by Politianus in his letter to Bartolomeo della Scala (1498, T1r). Politianus (1498, S1r-S1v) is also the source for Epictetus’ life, except for the two verses attributed to Epictetus himself (for whose possible sources see the corresponding note in the modernised edition).

None of the aforementioned editions of Epictetus contain the apophthegms which Sanford provides at the end of the book. Their sources, as specified by Sanford himself, are the following: Stobaeus; the Greek monk Antonius Melissa, who lived in the XI century (author of a collection of sententiae which was first printed in Greek in 1546 and in Latin in 1555); Aulus Gellius; Erasmus’ Apophtegmata; the Facietiarum exemplorumque libri VII (first printed in 1516) by the Italian scholar Lucio Domizio Brusoni from Contursi (Brusonius Contursinus).

In his prefatory letter to the queen, Sanford argues that by reading the Manual we will “lead our life both well and wealthily” (A2v). This opinion was not shared by everyone. Since Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae, whose stated purpose was to remove passions from his soul and from that of the reader, a debate originated in Europe on whether the stoic eradication of emotions was a viable foundation of morality (Kraye 1988, 364). Whilst Politianus – who translated the Manual, see below – commented that the suppression of impulses was not beyond human capacities, others, like Coluccio Salutati or Montaigne, were not convinced by the stoic rigorism. The compatibility of stoicism with Christian doctrine was disputed. Stoic ethics had mostly been perceived as near to Christian ethics from the patristic era onwards. And yet, at least three points of it were controversial: the total eradication of emotions; determinism; the idea of virtue as the supreme good (367-70). In his letter, Sanford writes that the author of the Manual “although he were an ethnic, yet he wrote very godly and Christianly”, thus making it clear that he considers Epictetus’ teachings compatible with a Christian conception of life.

[1] On Epictetus’ life see Inwood 2006.

[2] On the Latin translations of the Manual, see Boter 2011; Oldfather 1952

[3] c. AD 490-560, a Neoplatonic philosopher from Cilicia. In addition to the commentary to the Manual, we still have his commentaries on writings of Aristotle: on the Categoriae, the Physica, De caelo and De anima.

[4] In the English edition, the number 56 is wrongly repeated and therefore the chapters are numbered 1 to 69.

[5] No other edition or translation, except Du Moulin’s, has this number of chapters.

[6] In chap. 56 (39 in modern editions), where Du Moulin translates ὅρος οὐδείς ἐστιν with il n’y a jamai fin ne term, Sanford translates “there is no end”. Given the adherence to the French text in the other cases, the avoidance of the double term can be better explained as an instance of simplification than of fidelity to the Greek or Latin text. In one case, Sanford further enriches a phrase created by Du Moulin with another adjective: in chap. 6 (3 of modern editions) for the French fragile, he writes “fragile and brittle”.

- Boter, Gerard J. 2011. “Epictetus”. In Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, Volume IX, 1-54. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

- Dobbin, Robert F., ed. 1998. Epictetus. Discourses, Book 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

- Hadot, Ilsetraut, ed. 1996. Simplicius. Commentaire sur le Manuel d’Epictète. Leiden: Brill.

- Inwood, Brad. 2006. “Epictetus”. In: Brill’s New Pauly, edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by Christine F. Salazar. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e332560 (accessed 7 February 2023).

- Kraye, Jill. 1988. “Moral Philosophy”. In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Charles B. Schmitt et al., 301-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- Long, A. A. “Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius”. In Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome, edited by T. James Luce, volume 2, 985-1002. New York: Scribner.

- Politianus, Angelus, ed. 1498. “Epicteti Stoici Enchiridion”. In Omnia opera Angeli Politiani, S1r – T3v. Venezia: Aldus Manutius.

- Salmon, Vivian. 2004. “Sanford [Sandford], James”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24637 (accessed 7^th February 2023).

- Seddon, Keith. 2005. Epictetus’ Handbook and the Tablet of Cebes: Guides to Stoic Living. London and New York: Routledge.

- Wirth, Theo. 1967. “Arrians Errinerungen an Epiktet” MuseumHelveticum 24: 149-89, 197-216.

- Wolf, Hieronymus, ed. 1561. Epicteti Enchiridion . . . Item, Cebetis Thebani Tabula. Basel: Johann Oporinus.